Disclosure
by Helarctos
Summary: [fanfiction for Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History] Set about a year before the novel's beginning, this fic explores the background to Francis's remarks to Richard about the Macaulay twins' relationship, and considers their friends' reactions.
1. A Secondhand Story

Title: Disclosure

Summary: [fanfiction for Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History Set about a year before the novel's beginning, this fic explores the background to Francis's remarks to Richard about the Macaulay twins' relationship, and considers their friends' reactions.

Author's Notes: The quotations preceding each chapter are from the novel itself. The characters and plot belong to Donna Tartt; I am only expanding on her work, for no financial gain and with no disrespect intended. If you have not yet read The Secret History, you won't want to read this fic. If you have, you know what you're getting into.

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**1. A Secondhand Story**

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_"He told Henry, not me. I'm afraid I don't know the details. Apparently he had the key and you remember how he used to barge in without knocking – Come now ... You must have had some idea."_  
– Francis Abernathy, to Richard Papen

* * *

"Bunny told me the most extraordinary story yesterday," said Henry, with no preamble, and with no particular feeling in his voice. Ice cubes clinked in his glass as he set it down. 

Francis, dealing the cards, gave a noncommittal "Oh?" and nothing more. He expected some Bunnyism or other, the typical thing. A run-in with the hippies on the lawn, maybe. It'd deserve the qualifier _extraordinary_ as a sarcastic commentary.

But Henry meant it sincerely, as would soon be shown. He continued after a long draw on his cigarette. "You know, of course, he has a key to the twins' apartment."

"So do I," said Francis. "So do you, don't you?" Unremarkable thus far. God, Henry was the most _boring_ storyteller. "What did he do, lose it somewhere stupid? Leave the door open and let some raccoons in?"

"Oh, he let himself in, all right," said Henry dryly. With neat precision he tapped the cards Francis had dealt him into a tidy stack. The hand formed an effortless fan, then, when he raised it and gave it a deft little twist. "He says he saw something odd. Do you think the twins ever go to bed together?"

Francis's jaw dropped slightly. Henry had delivered this unthinkable question in the most neutral tone imaginable. He might have been asking any mundane thing. "What?" Francis finally managed, in a voice stretched abnormally high.

"I said, do you think the twins ever go to bed together," Henry repeated, unblinking, and tapped ash into the ashtray. "That's what Bunny said he saw. Walked in on."

"Well, of course they've always been _close_," said Francis, stalling a little. In truth he'd wondered, himself. "Maybe Bunny saw something different than what he _thought_ he saw. I mean, what would _Bunny_ be doing in their _bedroom?_"

"He might simply be lying," said Henry. Casually he studied his cards. "He might think it would be something funny to say."

_Then why are you asking me?_ But Francis thought he knew why. Little things that wouldn't stand out individually were to Francis's sharp eye a noticeable pattern: the rare smiles Henry granted Camilla more often than anyone else; the little tokens of solicitude that could so easily be chalked up to courtesy or chivalry, except that they lingered a second too long. Francis could almost feel sorry for Henry. However, he felt a good deal sorrier for himself. He wondered whether Henry had any idea why Francis might take a particular interest in this question. He'd been very discreet with Charles, he liked to think.

"It certainly _is_ an extraordinary story," Francis said, finally, and laid his cards face-down in front of him. He couldn't possibly keep playing. He needed a drink, if they were going to talk about this – about _Charles_, for God's sake – and his glass was empty. Shoving his chair back with a hasty screech of wood against linoleum, he got up and went to the kitchen. He brought back the whole bottle.

"No more for me just now, thanks," Henry said without being asked, as Francis poured himself a good glassful of Famous Grouse, no ice, no water, nothing. Serenely he smoked his cigarette; but he watched Francis steadily all the while. He was waiting for a real answer, Francis knew. He wouldn't be put off. He wanted to know what Francis thought. Francis thought he could feel his own hand shake a little, putting the bottle down.

"I think it's possible," said Francis, choosing his words carefully, "that Bunny did see something."

Henry nodded. No expression, only that matter-of-fact nod. If Francis's assessment, vague as it was, had disappointed Henry at all or given him cause for upset, he wasn't showing it.

"We always did say it'd be nice to have a sister." Francis tried for levity. Actually, he wouldn't have found a sister appealing in that regard, and incest taboos had nothing to do with it. Henry might even know that. It was hard to tell what Henry noticed. If it had been anyone else, Francis would have been clamoring for details – what did Bunny see? what were the twins doing? what were they wearing? had they been drinking, did Bunny suppose? – but this was _Henry_, whose weird reserve seemed practically _designed_ to stave off awkward questions. So Francis polished his pince-nez, unnecessarily, with his handkerchief, and held his tongue. Holding his tongue was not his forte.

Henry snorted. "We did say that. I don't think that's what we had in mind when we said it. Certainly _I_ didn't." Abruptly he changed gears. "I think I will have some more of that, after all," and he poured himself more scotch.

It was too much for Francis, suddenly, to sense this conversational door closing without having really found out anything. The words rushed out before he could think better of them. "Did Bunny say what it was he thought he saw? I mean, were they really, you know, _in flagrante delicto_?" Francis's treacherous imagination conjured the scene, down to the little gasps Charles made and the scent of linden-water in the air. In this scene Camilla was a prop, albeit a beautiful one since she looked so like Charles.

Oh, yes, he could picture it all too well. Charles sliding his hands greedily under Camilla's blouse, the way he'd only ever touch Francis when he was very drunk. Camilla laughing low with that funny little catch in her throat, pretending to bat him away. It wouldn't deter him because he wanted her, really wanted her, lucky girl that she was, and he'd win her over with kisses. Kissing Charles was like drowning in honey. You knew it was going to kill you but it was so sweet you didn't care. They'd shuck off one another's clothes, right there in the living room, and that's how Bunny would find them. Careless, the pair of them, too caught up in one another to notice anyone else. And Bunny's jaw gaping in that stupid way Bunny had: clumsy Bunny, standing in the doorway, too much the philistine to appreciate what it was he'd been privileged to witness, and too much the plebeian to feel any pain at his own exclusion, or at his inferiority to so much beauty. Too pedestrian to see anything in it but a base joke.

Henry cleared his throat delicately. "Bunny certainly made it sound as though they were." Infuriatingly devoid of detail, and Henry sounded almost reluctant to have said even that much. Francis suspected if pressed Henry would plead the impropriety of the subject. He also suspected the impropriety of the subject had nothing to do with why Henry preferred not to go into detail. _Is it that you don't want to imagine her with him? Or is it that you can't imagine it at all, any of it, and that just drives home why it'll never be you with her?_

Henry had always seemed aloof from such matters, as chaste as a marble statue and as cold. Francis had never once tried to proposition him, even at the height of boredom. If Henry had given any indication of liking men – even in the ultimately unsatisfactory way Charles could be persuaded to do – Francis was sure Julian would have been much happier for it. As for women, he'd never seen Henry with one, or heard him breathe a word about one, except Camilla; and she was on a pedestal as far as Henry was concerned. How many chances had Henry been given, how many never taken because he didn't know what to do with them? Francis had wondered idly before. Goodness, Francis had gone farther with Camilla than Henry probably ever would, and Francis didn't even like girls that way.

Damn Henry, anyway. As upsetting as the news might be, Francis desperately wanted to know all about it. Between his general penchant for gossip and his personal interest in all things pertaining to Charles, he couldn't help but be fascinated by Henry's secondhand story, all the more so in its utter failure to satisfy. Who knew what Bunny might have told Henry? Francis of all people knew how much Bunny loved to draw out the finer points of anything the slightest bit salacious. It _would_ have to be prim Henry who heard the news, wouldn't it? Francis obviously couldn't ask Bunny about it himself, and even more obviously couldn't ask the twins. Now the minutiae were locked behind Henry's expressionless face, laid away in tissue paper, to be taken out later and examined privately, Francis was sure. Hoarded, though Henry wouldn't think of it that way. It was maddening to have all the rich sick splendor of Charles's secret life so close yet inaccessible.

A quick spark of sudden malice made Francis's genuine curiosity flare all the brighter. Whether to goad Henry into revealing more or to punish him for his reticence, even Francis couldn't be sure, but he went on, with an affected detachment. "Imagine, it's been going on right under our noses this whole time, hasn't it? Ever since we met them. I can't think that it's a _recent_ development, can you? They're a matched pair in some ways, like a set of bookends. There's something almost quaint about it. Like something out of Faulkner."

Henry made an indistinct noise that could have been disgust or distress. Francis leaned forward, eyes keen for a sign he'd hit the mark, but Henry only said, "Just because they're from the South doesn't mean we need to bring _Faulkner_ into this."

Disappointed, Francis sat back. "Well, I guess it's not _hurting_ anyone, what they're doing. If they are doing that. Above the age of consent and all that."

"It was good enough for the pharaohs," Henry said, tight-lipped, and picked up the cards he'd patiently laid aside. "Are we going to play out this hand or not?"

"I don't see how I can," Francis said, too edgy to pretend coolness. _I don't see how you can, either,_ he thought but would never say.


	2. At the Twins' Apartment

**2. At the Twins' Apartment**

* * *

_"You haven't forgotten me, have you? Bishop House, number ten?"_  
— Charles Macaulay, to a Hampden College housekeeper

_"I've lived with Charles all my life."_  
— Camilla Macaulay, to Bunny Corcoran

* * *

"Don't cry, Milly," said Charles miserably. "Please don't."

"I'm not crying. I'm mad." The muffled voice from beneath the comforter sounded shaky, despite Camilla's claim. Only a spray of golden hair remained visible.

"You're hiding under your blanket. You don't do that when you're mad."

"I'm not hiding."

"You are. Show me your face if you aren't."

"No."

"Then I don't believe you."

Silence, for a moment. Slowly she lowered the comforter to reveal a suspiciously red-eyed face.

"See, you _are_ crying," said Charles, vindicated and unhappy at once. "I'm going to go make him sorry."

"You can't do that." Sitting up, she shot out a hand to grab his arm, to keep him sitting on the side of the bed where he was. "If you do that, everyone will know _why_."

"No one's going to believe him."

"They'll believe him if you give them a _reason_ to," Camilla shot back. Her voice still shook, though exasperation gave it a stronger edge.

The set of Charles's mouth said he didn't like this logic. "So what do you want me to do?"

"Not what you want to do. You can't just go give Bunny a black eye." Secretly Camilla liked the idea of Bunny getting a black eye — only justice, given he'd seen what he shouldn't. Nonetheless it wouldn't do for Charles to go confirming whatever Bunny felt like saying about what he'd seen.

"Who says I can't?"

"All right, you _can_ in the sense that you're _able_ to, but you shouldn't. Anyway it's our fault really."

"We shouldn't have given him a key to the apartment," Charles agreed glumly.

"No, we shouldn't have been doing what we were doing in the _living room_. It was stupid." It had not been Camilla's idea. It had not, in fact, been anyone's idea, insofar as that would have entailed thinking; it had, however, been instigated by Charles, as it usually was.

"Camilla. It's our apartment. We can do whatever we want here. That's why the door has a lock in the first place. That's why we _have_ an apartment, isn't it?"

"Because the doors lock?"

Charles scowled at his sister. "You know what I mean."

"I know," Camilla admitted. "The dorm rooms had locks on the doors too."

"And you were the one who hated the dorms."

"You complained about it too."

"Well, I liked the dorms. I liked living with a lot of other people. Just not being away from you." Charles leaned over a little to caress her cheek lightly with the backs of his fingers.

"I was only upstairs," Camilla reminded him, as if he needed to be reminded. Hampden was a progressive little college. Their dormitory had been co-ed. The rooms just weren't co-ed.

"That only made it worse. For you too. That's what you said."

"Well, I was right. We really couldn't _do_ anything. People would have noticed, or heard something." Camilla had been quite adamant about that, all through freshman year. The summer came as a relief to them both, and before returning to school the next fall they'd successfully lobbied their Nana to let them live off-campus. It was cheaper anyway, if they shared a place, Camilla had convinced Nana, and that way they could cook for themselves.

"I think it would have been all right." That had been Charles's contention then, and he stuck to it now. They'd argued about it more than once. A year of frustration, relieved only by the merciful holiday breaks (and once a furtive tryst in an old bridge room, oh, Milly, the glory of that) — two whole semesters of tantalising separation from his twin, with her just up the stairs and infinitely out of reach. It had been enough to drive him into Francis's bed, for God's sake. Some girls, too, sometimes. Obviously not at the same time. If Camilla didn't like his going to bed with any or all of them, she never said a word about it. She should know it didn't mean anything to him.

No one mattered except her.

He'd half hoped she'd be jealous about it, and give in. Maybe she had, in a belated indirect way. Maybe that was why they were living together now. She'd never _said_ so; therefore he couldn't be sure. He hated not being sure.

Camilla shrugged one shoulder. She'd pinned the bedsheet between her arms and her sides, and the movement barely shifted it. "I didn't want to take that chance. And now it doesn't matter. Bunny knows and what if he tells anyone? What if he tells _Julian?_" It was Julian Morrow's opinion that mattered most to her. Their professor, their mentor, selective almost beyond reason, and Camilla could not imagine being excluded from his favor. They'd have to change majors. No one else taught classics at Hampden, and Julian taught all the courses a classics major could take, by his own rules.

She didn't really care what Bunny Corcoran thought of her, not much anyway. What she cared about was that chance he might tell Julian, and the consequent chance Julian might believe him, and the consequent chance Julian might be disgusted. Her first thought, there in the living room when they'd realised they weren't alone and Bunny stood in the doorway gaping, had been of this. As if Julian were their guardian, and Bunny was going to run and tattle on them.

"He won't," Charles said immediately. "How would he even bring up something like that with Julian? They've never been close. Besides, I don't think Julian would care even if Bunny did tell him. It's our word against his, and that's if it even bothered Julian enough to ask us."

Camilla rubbed at her eyes. "You really think so?"

"I know so." Charles pulled back the blanket and gently eased his arm around her. He couldn't quite get into bed with her, not with the sheet wrapped around her like that. He could only sit alongside her and try to hold her.

"Our word against his." Camilla repeated her twin's words.

"Absolutely." Smooth, reassuring.

"Then why do you want to go beat him up?"

"Because he made you cry."

"I wasn't crying," she insisted, stubborn as ever.

"Hush." He coaxed her arm about him, too, and the sheet fell.

She snuggled into his side, comforted despite herself. "Don't go anywhere."

Charles wriggled under the sheet, now that he could, and drew Camilla down to lie against the pillows with him. They smelled of hyacinths, because they were hers. This was her bed; he had his own. It was a two-bedroom apartment. He wasn't always allowed into her bed. "You want me to stay here?"

"Yes. Like we used to," she said. By that, he knew she didn't want him to make love to her, but then again, Bunny had killed the mood pretty well. He couldn't be surprised.

When she said _like we used to_, she meant the way they'd slept together when they were children. After their parents died, the twins refused to be separated. They would cry inconsolably and loudly if anyone tried. They were only five, then. They had terrible nightmares in which everyone disappeared, even one another, and they needed the reassurance of one another's company when they awoke. It took two years before Camilla decided she wanted her own room, with wallpaper she chose herself, and that was the end of that. Still she crept into his room every now and then, for comfort.

Later on, they crept into one another's rooms for other reasons, but they were too old by then to excuse spending the night there. It was easy to hide things in Nana's big old house, but Camilla said they had to be careful. If anyone found out about them, she said, probably Nana and the uncles would send the twins away to boarding school. Separate boarding schools. They would be separated and that would be the end of the world.

_If they take you away from me,_ Charles had told her, _I'll run away and bring you back again._ He would, too. He'd find a way. That was his job. He had to take care of his sister because she belonged to him and she needed him.

_Then how will we live?_ Camilla, always practical — always contrary.

_The same way we always have. Us against the world._

_No, I mean what would we live on? What would we eat, for heaven's sake?_ Her question, though a good one, only got her bitten, and that ended that particular discussion. Still he'd yielded to her caution, most of the time. It had been enough to keep their secret.

Until Bunny Corcoran decided to let himself into their apartment just a little while ago.

Charles reached over to click off the lamp that stood beside Camilla's bed, careful not to knock over any of the clutter on her nightstand. He pulled her toward him, face to face. "We didn't do anything wrong, honey. We didn't do a damn thing wrong except let Bunny have a housekey."

"We can't take it away from him now. That's like admitting what happened."

"So we'll be more careful. We'll make sure to go into my room first. Or in here, if you want," though that was a more dubious proposition. "Or the bathroom." Though he'd recognised just now what her intentions were and were not, he couldn't resist sliding a hand down her back. "Anything you want."

"Because he doesn't have keys to any of the rooms. Just the front door." Camilla sounded more confident now — saying it more to reassure herself than to tell Charles what he already knew.

"No one has keys to anything but the front door." Francis had a key. Henry might still have a key. Hard to remember who'd taken care of what while the twins were away. It could have been anyone. They were probably lucky it was Bunny, because no one would believe Bunny. "But we couldn't possibly have predicted Bunny would decide to come over and just let himself in. He has that key to come water the plants when we're not here, not to make himself at home whenever he wants."

"Try telling him that," Camilla grumbled, and corrected herself at once — "No, I didn't mean that really."

Charles didn't seem inclined to leap up and storm over to Bunny's dorm any more, anyway. His hand was sliding down further. It was like he couldn't help it. If she asked him, that was what he'd probably say — that he couldn't help it. "We didn't move here so that we'd have to watch ourselves all the time. We moved so we could be together. We shouldn't worry about Bunny or anyone or what they think, Milly. We should just be together, like we were meant to be."

Camilla gave a little sigh, half resignation, half acquiescence. "That's what you always say." Except the part about Bunny, because that only just happened.

"That's because I'm right, and you know it." He pulled her close. Closer. She didn't resist, and that made him bolder. They were both keyed up. All that energy had to go somewhere. "And you liked it in the living room."

"Maybe I did." Withholding or teasing, it was hard to tell with her. Maybe even Camilla didn't know.

Regardless, Charles knew the truth, and he pressed the point. "You did. The same way you liked it in the bridge room that one time —"

She remembered as well as he did — how could she not? — and the memory sent a shiver all through her. "Yes." The admission was hardly more than a whisper. She slid her calf along the outside of his. That movement said more.

Proof that she wanted him. There was nothing, nothing in the world more exciting. "Milly," he whispered back, and then he didn't want to say anything at all. Neither of them did.

Camilla fell asleep in his arms afterward. Charles felt obscurely proud that she'd fallen asleep first. He'd exhausted her, or soothed her, enough that she could do that. In its own way it was almost as much a triumph as making her come. Also, it meant he'd get to sleep in her bed with her, the whole night, something not common even these days.

Bunny didn't seem very important at all right now. If Bunny made trouble tomorrow, or next week, or ever, Charles supposed he would deal with it then. Right now, nothing seemed real outside the compass of this bed, Camilla asleep and trusting. They'd be like this forever.

(Julian's voice, an echo, over the remembered sound of wineglasses clinking in a toast: _Live forever._ Camilla dreamed it, a long dinner party, the way sometimes dreams could be terribly mundane. _Live forever_, and everyone was there. Everyone was happy. Henry was pouring her more wine.)

Charles curled around his twin with a sleepy sigh of contentment. They'd wake up together in the morning, the way they did when they were children. And if she had any nightmares between now and then, he would be here.

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End file.
